Lincoln Davenport Chafee ( CHAY-fee; born March 26, 1953) is an American politician who served as the 74th governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015 and as United States Senator from 1999 to 2007. Previously, he served as mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island from 1993 to 1999. A member of the Libertarian Party since 2019, he previously was a Republican until 2007, an independent from 2007 to 2013, and a Democrat from 2013 to 2019. He is the last non-Democrat to hold statewide or Congressional office in Rhode Island.
The son of Republican politician John Chafee, who was the 66th Governor of Rhode Island, the United States Secretary of the Navy, and a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, the younger Chafee first elected office was as a member of the Warwick City Council in 1985. After the elder Chafee died in 1999, the younger Chafee was appointed to fill his father's seat in the U.S. Senate to which he won a full term in 2000.
Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against authorization of the use of force in Iraq in the lead-up to the Iraq War. He was defeated in his 2006 reelection bid by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee subsequently shifted his affiliation towards the Democratic Party by first endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, running as an independent for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010, serving as the co-chair of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and then finally officially switching his registration to the Democratic Party in May 2013. In March 2019, he switched his political affiliation again to the Libertarian Party.
In 2015, he sought nomination to become the Democratic Party candidate in the 2016 presidential election, but withdrew prior to the primaries. In January 2020, Chafee filed to run again for president, this time seeking the Libertarian nomination. Chafee withdrew his candidacy on April 5, 2020, and announced he would instead focus on helping "other Libertarians seeking office."
Early life, education and career
Lincoln Davenport Chafee was born on March 26, 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Virginia (née Coates) and John Chafee. Chafee's great-great-grandfather Henry Lippitt was Governor of Rhode Island. Among his great-great-uncles are Rhode Island Governor Charles Warren Lippitt and United States Senator Henry Frederick Lippitt. His great-uncle Zechariah Chafee was a Harvard law professor and a notable civil libertarian. The Chafee family was among the earliest settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts, before moving south to Rhode Island.
He attended public schools in Warwick, Rhode Island, Providence Country Day School, as well as, later, Phillips Academy. At Brown University, Chafee captained the wrestling team, and in 1975 earned a Bachelor of Arts in classics. He then attended Montana State University's non-degree Farrier School (a sixteen-week horseshoeing program) in Bozeman. For the next seven years, he worked as a farrier at harness racetracks in the United States and Canada. One of the horses he shod, Overburden, set the track record at Northlands Park in Edmonton. In describing how his time as a farrier affected him, Chafee stated that "when you're around horses, you tend to be a quieter person."
Chafee entered politics in 1985, when he was elected over eight other candidates to become delegate to the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention. A year later, he was elected to the Warwick City Council, defeating an incumbent, and re-elected in 1988. He ran for Warwick Mayor in 1990, losing by 5 percent in a three-way race.
In 1992, he was elected Warwick's first Republican mayor in 32 years, and was re-elected in 1994, 1996, and 1998, when he won by 17% and carried all nine wards.
Chafee was praised for his fair-minded and sensible approach to government, including his ability to work with seven Democrats (of nine seats) on the Warwick City Council. He conservatively managed the city's finances, strengthening the city's bond rating and paying down the outstanding pension liability.
He worked effectively and cooperatively with the municipal unions, especially in settling a difficult and prolonged teacher labor dispute that he inherited from the previous administration.
As mayor, Chafee made conservation, environmental protection, and wise growth a priority. He purchased 130 acres of open space, planted hundreds of street trees, and created new historic districts and a new economic development "intermodal" district at the state airport. His municipal composting and recycling initiatives dramatically decreased landfill waste. His "Greenwich Bay Initiative", which extended sewer service to the most environmentally-sensitive areas of the city, earned Warwick recognition by EPA as one of the best local watershed programs in the nation.
After his father John announced he would not seek re-election in 2000, Lincoln Chafee announced he would run for the seat. When the elder Chafee died suddenly in October 1999, Governor Lincoln Almond appointed the younger Chafee to serve out the term.
In the general election he faced the Democratic nominee, then-U.S. Representative Robert Weygand. Chafee won the election 57%–41%.
In September 2005, Steve Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, announced his intention to run against Chafee in the Republican primary election. Among other stances differing from those of Chafee, Mayor Laffey opposed abortion and stem cell research. Laffey was supported by notable conservative groups, including the Club for Growth and several anti-abortion groups. Chafee went on to defeat Laffey in the primary on September 12 by a margin of 53%–47%. The turnout for the Republican primary was the largest in Rhode Island history. In his victory speech, Chafee credited independent voters and disaffiliated Democrats for his victory.
Chafee lost to Whitehouse in the general election, 54%–46%. In response to a question at a news conference on November 9, 2006, Chafee stated he was unsure whether he would remain in the Republican Party after serving out the remainder of his term. According to Michelle R. Smith of the Associated Press, when asked whether he felt that his loss may have helped the country by switching control of power in Congress (away from Republicans and toward the Democrats), he replied: "To be honest, yes."
Descended from a long line of moderate, center-right New England Republicans, Chafee's stances became increasingly liberal, more so than his father's positions had been. The now dominant conservatives referred to him as a "Republican In Name Only", or RINO. Most notable among these was Human Events magazine, which named Chafee "the No. 1 RINO in the country." In 2006, the National Journal rated Chafee as the most liberal Republican in the Senate, and placed him to the left of two Democrats, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu. GovTrack also ranked Senator Chafee as the most liberal Republican member in 2006; according to GovTrack's analysis, Chafee was to the left of his Republican colleagues as well as to the left of fourteen Democrats.
Known for often disagreeing with the Republican Party leadership, Chafee says he did not cast his ballot for President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, instead choosing to write in former president George H. W. Bush as a nod to the Republican Party of his father. Chafee frequently criticized the younger Bush's record on the environment, and expressed concern about the 2004 Republican platform and overall philosophical direction of the party. He described the younger Bush's presidency as "an agenda of energizing the far-right-wing base, which is divisive." Soon thereafter, he rejected Democratic overtures to leave the Republican Party after appeals to him from other Republican senators to remain in their caucus. Chafee considered challenging George W. Bush for re-nomination in the New Hampshire primary in 2004 on an anti- (Iraq and Afghanistan) war platform. In his autobiography, Against the Tide (2007), he states that "In the fall of 2003, part of me thought it was cowardly to oppose the president on so many issues and then not oppose him head-on as he sought renomination." However, he decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003.